State officials continue efforts to cut farmers’ diversions, increase river flows and restore declining fish populations.
— particularly those obtained prior to 1914 — lie at the heart of California’s perpetual wrangling over the allocation of increasingly
The conflict occurs even during periods when the state receives abundant rain and snow and its reservoirs are full. But it becomes more intense during the state’s periodic droughts, as illustrated by what happened in 2014 when then-Gov. Jerry Brown, citing “one of the driest years in recorded state history,” proclaimed a state of emergency.
The state clearly had the authority to curtail diversions by agencies, with rights granted after the state assumed managerial control of California water in 1914 — ironically exactly one century earlier. However, those with pre-1914 rights balked, contending that under state law the board could not order them to decrease diversions.
Environmental groups that had been pressing the board to become more assertive on water rights were disappointed. “A recent decision by California’s Sixth District Court of Appeal with California water law,” two officials of Cal Trout, one of the environmental groups, wrote in CalMatters, adding, “the decision shields a class of property owners whose rights were enshrined in law at a time when the rights of citizenship, land ownership and common decency were only afforded to a privileged few.
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